


Come and see me

by Broba



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Astronomy, Cherubs - Freeform, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-19
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2018-02-05 06:33:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1808827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Broba/pseuds/Broba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another fic idea suggested by the lovely Angeroo. </p><p>Post game, Roxy and Calliope have made a simple but good existence for themselves together. However, all that must come to an end when the traditions of cherub practices threaten everything. The horrifying truth of Calliope's nature will need to be faced, at long last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  
Two hundred and fifty light-years from Earth, a cluster of main sequence stars orbits a particularly dense agglomeration of dead stellar material. A collapsar of great gravitational force, sufficient to dominate the surrounding space and draw the paths of stars around it. Astronomers named it MP 224 and logged it in their texts and charts. An object of great interest from a scientific standpoint to be sure, but a distant thing not of immediate concern in the works of man. Though heavy and dense, the collapsar was not of sufficient size to become a supermassive black hole, it was determined to be small enough to have a spin and a violent effect on the cluster of stars around it. The thought that life could exist at any near distance to MP 224 was, of course, never even considered.  
  
Nonetheless, despite all logic and reason and the dictates of physics, something was alive at MP 224. Something large enough that it could only be measured in astronomical units, something of such force and potency that it could elide the gravitational forces of a black hole and skirt the event horizon with impunity. Unharmed, though it bathed in the violent x-ray storms at the poles of the accretion disc. What it was could not be explained simply, or completely, for the existence of a cherub is too enormous and devastating a thing to be contained in human terms. Suffice to say that it existed, lashing and coiling in the dust and hot gases surrounding MP 224, nesting and laying plans. The being was a mockery of knowledge and physical laws, and in form it looked like nothing so much as an hellish image of a serpent, a great gigantic serpent of Byzantine complexity, whose coiling whorls could encompass entire planets and sweep stars aside in its wake. The creature had come to MP 224 in obeisance to strange, dark impulses that swam beneath the surface of its inscrutable mind. Special particles formed and died upon the scaly membranes of its hide, leptons and anti-leptons throbbed into existence as it wound its mighty tail around itself and struck scale upon scale. Waves of energy were released in a deafening electromagnetic roar which interacted with the high energy streams produced by MP 224. The effect of this was a warping and rending of time itself, as the creature spoke its needs into the void. It sent out a call backwards in time, back two hundred and fifty years. A wave of magnetic pulses emanated from the zone where the warping effect of MP 224 ended, and the message was delivered to the intended target almost instantaneously, bypassing the limited ability of information to pass beyond light-speed.  
  
At the same moment that the creature issued their call, it arrived two hundred and fifty years later where the intended recipient was waiting. Across the globe astronomical facilities lit up as a brief, incredibly intense signal emanating from a previously uninteresting stellar cluster was received, examined and picked over. The signal had been quite unlike anything that would normally be expected from the area, and nothing like it had ever been heard before. In fact, a signal of this nature would only occur once or twice in the lifetime of an average universe and in most cases never at all, so rare are the circumstances involved.   
  
In a neatly appointed detached suburban home where the whitewashed walls had seen sleepy summer pass into cool winter and back again for years without anything untoward happening, there came a scream.  
  
Roxy Lalonde raced along the corridor that bisected the little house and hammered on the door to her housemates' room. Inside, Calliope was screaming. Roxy piled into the room and leapt onto the bed in a panic, scooping Calliope up into her arms and squeezing her tightly. They had grown up together, stayed together after playing the most extraordinary game every to take place, and in the years following had settled into an easy routine around each other, but Roxy had never heard Calliope scream like that. Calliope was sweating and her eyes were rolled almost back into her head, and she compulsively clawed at her temples until Roxy thought she was going to have a fit. And then, as soon as it had begun, the episode was over and Calliope collapsed back into the sheets and pillows.  
“Callie? Callie can you hear me? Look at me hon, it's Roxy, I'm right here.”  
“Roxy?”  
“Callie! What happened? Are you okay? Was it a bad dream?”  
Calliope clutched at her head sleepily and moaned through the headache pounding at her mind.  
“How can you- didn't you just hear that?”  
“Hear what hon? There's no sound, there's nothing. Jesus, it's the dead of night Callie, you were fast asleep it must have been a nightmare, 'kay?”  
“No, no,” Calliope whispered, “I hear it, I heard something out there. You have to believe me!”  
“Okay, if you say you heard something then I believe you, purple promise pinky swear, but you have to tell me what's going on Callie, does your head hurt? I can call a doctor-”  
“No, there's no point,” Calliope reached for her reflexively, and Roxy helped her up into a sitting position again. Without thinking Calliope leaned forward and rested against her, laying her cheek on Roxy's breast.  
“Callie, what's going on?”  
“It was a call,” Callie shuddered, “a mating call. From one of my species.”  
“Are you kidding me? You told me there were no other cherubs,”  
“No, I said there are so few that I'd never likely meet one. But I know it, I can feel it in my heart! The call was for me!”  
“So there's some, like, cherub dude knockin' down your door wanting a date?”  
“It's not exactly like that for us, Roxy,”  
Roxy rubbed her back warmly over the material of her cotton pyjamas and cooed softly.  
“So what is it like for you? Chocolates and a movie?”  
“No. When cherubs meet, there can only be conflict. We must fight for dominance, it is the way of things.” Calliope's teeth were chattering now, pointed fangs clattering against each other.  
“Well, ain't no way I'm letting you get all up in that kind of thing, missy. You're grounded, see? You're staying right here and you do your chores till this Casanova gets the idea and leaves off.”  
Roxy smiled wanly at the attempt at humour, but she buried her face against Roxy's chest again and shook her head miserably.  
“It's not so simple. If I don't answer the call and fight, then he's only going to come looking for me. I couldn't bear that, Roxy, the whole planet would be destroyed.”  
“Uhm,” Roxy took a moment to take this statement in, “you guys really don't know about taking no for an answer, do you?”  
“It's not funny, Roxy, this is really bad!”  
“Sure, I know it, but hey.” Roxy tilted her chin up and kissed her forehead tenderly, “we've been through 'really bad' before. We'll figure something out, like always. We just need to come up with some kind of a plan, is all.”  
“I'm not so sure I believe that, Roxy.”  
“Well, I'll believe it for both of us. Now come on, you got to tell me all about this cherub mating business, 'cause this is all sounding pretty crazy to me so far.”  
“All right,” Calliope sighed, “where to begin? Most of what I know is just rumours and legends of course, but I'll do my best.”  
“You have a think, and I'll make us up a night cap. I reckon we'll be up for a while.”  
“Yes,” said Calliope gravely, “there is quite a lot to explain. Tell me, what do you know about black holes?”  
  



	2. Chapter 2

Roxy listened in mute, mounting horror as Calliope told her about the cherubs, and how they met, and what they did together. The stories were lurid, impossible, and violent beyond belief. Calliope told her about entire star systems laid waste, civilisations devastated by evil-aligned cherubs who cared no more for intelligent sentient beings then they did for motes of dust in their wake. Somewhere, out in the great yawning vastness of space, one of those creatures was waiting- waiting for her. Coiled around the frothing accretion disc of a black hole it lurked in an electromagnetic hell and waited.  
  
“How did it find you? I mean, maybe it doesn't know where you are exactly, right?”  
“No,” Calliope whispered, “it's a temporal paradox. It has encountered me at some point in the future, and it is calling me in order for that meeting to take place.”  
“It can see the future?”  
Calliope nodded.  
“Can you do that?”  
Calliope shook her head sadly, “no, that is not in my gift. My powers are based on space, not time. I might be able to delay the meeting, but I can't change what is inevitable.”  
“I see, I see,” Roxy was thinking furiously, staring into her glass. They were sat at the kitchen table facing one another, a ludicrously prosaic setting to be discussing the potential destruction of the Earth and everyone on it.  
“I'm sorry, Roxy.”  
“It's not over yet! We can fix this.”  
“How?”  
“Well, what happens when you meet up? Take me through it.”  
Calliope shivered, and poured yet more sugar into her hot cocoa, taking a sip before answering.  
“Well, we will both take on our cosmic wormforms,”  
“What's one of those?”  
“Oh please don't make me show you,” Calliope held her hands over her eyes and groaned, “just imagine  great... big snake.”  
“How big?”  
“Well, picture the Sun.”  
“Right.”  
“Now imagine a snake that could nudge it to one side with a flick of its tail.”  
“You're kidding?”  
“No,”  
“You can turn into that?”  
Calliope nodded.  
“Well then! What's the problem, you'll totally kick his ass, right?”  
“I don't know,” Calliope said softly, “good-aligned cherubs rarely if ever come out on top of such an encounter. It won't be like you imagine- an evil-aligned cherub in its cosmic wormform is practically unstoppable.”  
“So you run. We can run together!”  
“I can't take you with me, not where I'm going. I... I have to face this, Roxy. Maybe this is the price I pay for all the horror my kind have caused, maybe it's justice in a way.”  
“Don't talk like that, it's crazy!”  
“But it's true though! Surely in the end, someone has to pay for all that violence, and blood?”  
“Why you?”  
Calliope shrugged, “I'm here, I guess.”  
  
They went into the garden and stared up into the night sky together. Though they had lived together for years, and there was certainly love between them, there had never been a particularly sexual dimension to their relationship. This was the first time that Roxy had ever really discussed the matter of procreation with Calliope, and the cherub's expression was blank and unreadable.  
“You're going, aren't you?”  
“I have to, Roxy.”  
“Will you come back?”  
“Of course! I promise you, I will be back if am able to. I promise.”  
“That's, that's not too encouraging, hon.”  
“Roxy,” Calliope reached for her and pecked her on the cheek tenderly, “I don't know what's out there, but this is something I just have to do. I will be back.”  
“I'll hold you to that,”  
“Now, go inside. You shouldn't look out, you might hurt your eyes.”  
“What's going to happen?”  
“Something I should have done long before now.”  
  
Roxy squeezed back tears and nodded silently, backing away into the house. She no sooner had closed the door when the entire lounge was lit up as if dawn had suddenly come. Roxy shrieked and ran to the window but she couldn't see, the light was too bright.  
  
Calliope breathed out slowly, and extended her arms, and her wings. It was easy, her body had wanted to complete this developmental cycle into her adult form for some time but she had always held back, refusing the biochemical desires of her treacherous biology for Roxy's sake. The parched sun-bleached grasses around her swayed and flattened as her wings unfurled with a snap of explosive force. They were pure white, enormous sheets of cold plasma that rippled and flexed like living fire behind her. And too her body changed, she shed her nightclothes without a second thought as her adult form asserted itself, and the young body flexed, strengthened and grew until she was easily fifteen feet in height, with only vague depressions to give any indication where eyes and a mouth might once have formed a face. The being turned that blank face once to regard the house behind her, and then without hesitation or regret the cherub took to wing and leapt up into the night. The backwash cracked every window in the street and for a full minute every computer and television screen showed a miasma of bright static that would not die.  
  
Clouds scattered and burned around her as Calliope breached the sound barrier with ease and stretched her hypersonic form out over the horizon and left the atmosphere of Earth far behind her. When she was safely free of the planet, when she would not leave the Earth a blistered cinder by accident with a moment's carelessness, she drew from the forces that drove her kind and accelerated. She knew how to act without thinking, her mind was expanded even farther then her body had been. Calliope was at last in her adult form fully, having shed the larval form of youth at last. She reached out and the solar system retreated behind her with ease. Her mass was negligible and her energy output practically unlimited, it was a matter of ease to reach relativistic speeds and as her mass ballooned infinitely she simply drew upon more energy to maintain her acceleration. Though the Sun dwindled to a vague dot behind her Calliope realised that it was not enough, she was still thinking like a newborn, crawling with aching slowness. She was still thinking of space as a thing, when in fact it was just a collection of loosely connected energy states. She concentrated and reached inside herself for more power, more then she had ever considered before.  
  
The stars around her became no more then notional points on a conceptual map. She felt as though she was wading through a haze of fireflies as she walked across the galactic sea. She was no longer truly travelling, no longer bound by the constraints of light speed, she was translating the information that comprised her body from one place to another without moving. In this form, space was nothing more then the canvas upon which she wrote her name.  
  
The black hole MP 224 was suspended in front of her like a black ball of nothing. It span furiously in a spiralling accretion disc, throwing out violent storm-rays of energy from its poles, gathering ever more power from the friction of dust spinning around it and the evacuation of high energy particles thrown out of it like sparks from an inky dynamo. One of those vivid rays of gas and energy contained and nourished a coiling serpentine form that bathed in the madness happily. Distance meant nothing to Calliope now, nor did size or mass, but she was still constrained by time- that dimension was closed to her as ever it had been. She could have picked up the serpent, black hole and all, in the palm of her hand if she wanted to but she could not harm him. Not in this form, at least.  
  
Calliope gathered herself together, shrinking and condensing back down to a more manageable size. Perspective warped and changed, the length of the great black serpent she faced extended away now the distance of a planetary orbit, no longer the slender skein she could wrap around a finger. It was aware of her, and stirred fitfully, one vast black eye rolling to regard the tiny point of light and heat that faced it. Beneath them the black hole span, utterly invisible except for the effect it had on surrounding space. The frame-dragging effects visible at this distance made the whole universe appear to be swirling and spiralling around the hole, like water flowing inexorably into a drain. There was no communication between them in words, there could not be, yet. The serpent writhed and coiled in the tidal forces and patiently awaited her.  
  
Calliope felt her body changing again, this time in answer to the sight of the great serpent that had called her. She could no longer conceive of herself as anything so small that it could be contained by one planet, let alone a stellar cluster, and nor could she contemplate ignoring the impulses that flooded her mind now. She was here, in the chosen place, like those where her people had met for immemorial aeons past to fight and to mate. Calliope changed, and grew, and exploded outwards. Now the clawing threads of gravity found purchase on pale body hat dwarfed words, now the high-energy particles gathered and nourished the belly of a great white wormform, the ultimate apotheosis of the cherubim. Calliope reared back and roared pure magnetism. The black serpent met her call with his own and their bodies met with cosmic force as the collapsar sang beneath them a song of ancient dread. For the first and last time in a universe the mating war of the cherubs had begin.  
  



	3. Chapter 3

The titanic forms clashed and struggled together. The crushing weight of the spinning collapsar below them was nothing, the sucking maw of dense star-stuff was irrelevant, nothing more then a convenient location for their revels. The radiation could not harm them, the gravitational forces could not rend them. Motes of dust flung around the accretion ring at relativistic speeds careened harmlessly off their hides, releasing atomic flashes of violence that the great serpents disregarded casually.  
  
The noiseless flashes of atomic annihilation illuminated their war as they coiled and grappled for purchase. The inconceivable masses of the wormforms made them leaden and sticky with gravity, their bodies collided and clung tenaciously, and only ripped apart with leviathan effort.  
  
Though her mind was by now expanded a thousandfold, though her body was no more what it had been, still Calliope maintained her inner sense of self. She knew who she was and what she was fighting for, but doubts were surfacing. She had never longed for the contact of another cherub, she had never felt any sense of kinship for her species. Unlike humans, unlike Roxy, she did not consider one cherub or a million cherubs to be worth her consideration any more then she would look at a beach and wonder about the fate of a single sand grain. The world as it had been, her life as it had been, these things were enough for her and had occupied her thoughts completely. Now however she was faced with the reality of a fully grown male cherub who had called to her and drawn her to this place. Now things were... different. Her species was by no means sociable, but they would not have survived at all without some deep primal urge to mate and now that urge was asserting itself. For once in her entire life Calliope was faced with the treacherous, appalling thought that union with another cherub might be a thing to be desired. Almost, though not quite, against her will, her own body coiled more tightly and sinuously about the great black serpent which followed suit.   
  
The legends spoke of the dreaded mating war of the cherubs, vicious conflagrations which had laid waste to entire star clusters and formed the creation-mythos of countless civilisations, but Calliope was seeing the truth now. She was not fighting against a creature of flesh and thought, she was fighting against the urge growing in her body to throw of the inoculated instincts of a lifetime, the urge to mate. The sight of the black serpent encoiling her amid the black hole debris was a trigger to ancient processes long dormant, and this situation alone could rouse up the mating urge of a cherub in cosmic wormform. She could sense that something similar was taking place in the psyche of the black serpent. It was reacting almost entirely on instinct now, hurling loops and coils of its body against her with wild abandon as it let go of consciousness to embrace the unfamiliar and driving urge. They were both now caught up in it and in each other, and the mating urge would not release them unless it was sated. This, then, was the ultimate curse and irony of the mating war- to conquer the urge to mate, to overcome with consciousness the rampant desires of the flesh, was in fact to lose that mind to permanent madness. The urge would never lift or end until it was sated- just as this location was necessary to rouse the urge only in consummation could it be quelled. The black serpent understood this, he had given himself up to it knowing full well what was truly at stake. Calliope was left with a sickening decision, she could only surrender to the consummation and in surrendering at least bring it to an end or else she could maintain her high-minded opposition and write forever in the border of a raging collapsar. The black serpent howled in ecstasy, what consciousness remained in him was more then content to war with her forever in this delight but Calliope was still enough herself to know the horror of that idea.  
  
Their war was a brutal, violent thing as awesomely powerful bodies thrashed against one another, but what had been speculated to be a simple conflict by ancient scholars was in fact, she realised now, a psychological war with the self played out against the backdrop of another. Calliope roared in despair and defiance as she hurled herself against the black serpent, which rose to meet her arrogantly and coiled about her.  
  
The two of them wrapped one about the other and made a monochrome double helix of their bodies in the middle of the spire of energy erupting from the pole of MP 224. It was too much to bear, too much even to contemplate. Calliope realised with complete certainty that she had to give in. She now knew why the good-aligned cherub so rarely came out of the mating war the victor- no matter what she could not give in to the ecstasy of the mating urge totally, she could not abandon herself forever into the grasp of the madness that had been the deepest secret of her species for uncounted ages. She called out Roxy's name silently into the void, pules of raw magnetic plasma that spiralled down to the surface of MP 224 never more to be heard. If she had not known the touch of a warm hand on her cool brow, if she had not felt a human warmth curl up next to her, if she had not let herself love, then she could have been content to throw her mind away and give in to an infinity of pleasure in the mating urge but this she could never do and she knew it. The black serpent had lashed and cored her body over and over again with vicious rending blows but it was not the pain that brought her to the point of submission. Pulses of energy coursed down her body and the tips of her scales glowed with lepton emissions as she signalled her readiness to mate and bear the egg. The consummation began as she froze still and her incredible, endless body became still and quiescent amid the thrashing of the black serpent. They fell together through the energy jet and toward MP 224, and if the black serpent gave in to one last element of the urge, wrapping her up in his coils and drawing her wounded, paralysed body up and away from the lethal event horizon.   
  
Calliope could not speak, or feel, or react. Her body was already changing and drawing in upon itself to provide the minuscule egg within her with the awesome energies that would be required to create a cherub. She was shrinking down now, curling around herself as her once vivid scales became pale and lustreless, and her great heart as vast as a planet stilled and became quiet. She entered a period of quiet inward contemplation as she was carefully drawn through space by the victor of their mating war and cast outward into the void. She knew on some subconscious level that she would never meet him again, their war was now over and having proven himself the victor this other cherub would become a complete stranger to her once more, going on about his inscrutable goals and never once looking back with afterthought or regret. There was no love between them, but nor was there hate as a human might understand the word.  
  
Even if they met again, if their territories clashed, they would fight to the death but there was no animosity in it. They were so much bigger then such concerns, and the emotions of a fully developed cherub could not be so easily accounted for. He was an evil-aligned cherub and so he would lash out with spite at anything in his path, but only because it was in his nature to do so. To suggest that he would condescend to actually dislike one being or another was to vastly overestimate his ability to care.  
  
So it was that the father of their egg, their child, departed without comment and left her life forever. Calliope, too, could feel no animosity toward him. Though she would have delighted very much in killing him, perhaps, it would have been the essence of her nature to do so in that moment and not out of any particular sense of justice or duty. Those concerns had been left behind on the tiny Earth, she did not hate the black serpent in that moment any more then she hated a tract of interstellar gas or the ineffable pull of gravity. Calliope could barely move to lift her great head and look about her as she span away into the void. The surrounding star cluster had attracted a general agglomeration of dust and gas, and sufficient matter to form a planet or two- little more then low-gravity chunks of rock and methane ice. With a little effort she managed to direct her course towards the most solid-looking world she could find. By the time she reached the gravity well of the un-named place she was little larger then a continent. As she fell into the wispy atmosphere of vapour she was no larger then a house, and when she touched down in a shower of rock splinters and jagged ice shards she could sit up and look down at a body that was not much larger then she had been in her life on Earth. She was surrounded on all sides by the high sides of the steaming, fizzing crater that her arrival had left. She pulled herself to her feet with a soundless moan, holding her belly and doubling over. Her skin was rent and bleeding all over, and ichor splattered against the ice. She was badly hurt, and she knew with a dread certainty that she was not guaranteed to survive the process of producing the egg.  
  
Calliope collapsed to her knees and fell onto her side, curling up. She didn't need to breathe or eat, but she could only sustain herself in this environment for a limited time in her wounded state. She could already feel the egg forming and hardening inside her body, and soon it would demand a life of its own. The proper thing to do, she felt, would be to simply die and let her child take its own chances, as she had. That was the way of her species, and she barely had the energy to go against what her body was dictating.  
  
Softly, with tears that formed instantly into gently floating ice crystals, she hugged herself and cried. She cried for her child, and the cold universe which would be surely indifferent to its suffering. She cried for herself, betrayed by her own body, the facts of her biology. And, she wept for Roxy, who would never see this place, and never know what transpired here. Roxy was just a human, and would live and die like the flicker of eyelashes in sunlight.  
  
There was no sun here, but the tidal influence of MP 224 gave this world a notable spin and the relatively close star cluster all around made the sky a vivid riot of colour as the methane clouds and ice storms were alternately boiled and frozen. Though the world was barren and utterly devoid of warmth or comfort it was not without a certain rugged, stern beauty. As something approximating dawn broke over the rim of her crater Calliope rose up on her elbows and squinted into the light. At some point she had managed to drift off to sleep, but she couldn't remember clearly. Her blood was crusted and dry on her skin, and her wounds were fringed with methane ice crystals like winking jewels. As the daylight terminator washed over her and lit up the crater the thin atmosphere stirred around her and she estimated that the weather systems on the world would be violent indeed. She looked up into the sky and thought about Roxy. She could remember a dream, fading now, of Roxy taking her hands and promising to return to her. Calliope laid back and concentrating. She was remembering wrong- it was she who had promised Roxy. She had promised to come back home. Now, her only home was a barren icy crater on a mere excuse of a world.  
  
The “day” passed, another night and a day more. Calliope managed to get to the rim of the crater, but the sight that greeted her made her question the effort. The landscape was a stunning, silent tundra of ice dunes that had been sculpted by heat and wind into wild, undulating shapes. All of this and nothing more. Calliope dropped to one knee and gasped with pain, there was truly nothing for her here. The egg was growing and soon it would be an unavoidable fact of her existence. She was weak, but less so then yesterday. She hurt, but less so then yesterday. She looked up to the stars, and she remembered the way back to Earth.  
  
Calliope pulled herself up with a groan and concentrated. She had a long way to go, but she just had to draw together enough energy to reach it. The Earth was still there, waiting for her. She didn't know if she was going to make it, but egg or no egg she decided then and there not to stay.  
  



	4. Chapter 4

The journey was agonising. Calliope felt every demand for more power like a fresh knife in her side as she ascended energy levels until once more she felt her body and her consciousness expand into the cosmic realm where distance became meaningless. Where she had waded through starfields with ease now she felt only like she was tumbling helplessly through infinity. The distant globe of the Earth called out to her and she returned there in haphazard, chaotic steps.  
  
Roxy was watching the news when she heard the sound from outside the house. She was swaddled in her robe with a towel wrapped around her head and was just sitting on the couch staring listlessly at the television. She had caught herself bursting into tears randomly, and had determined to get on with things. She had painted one wall of her bedroom and bought a new dining room table which lay un-built in a flat pack box on the floor. No matter what he did nothing stuck, she couldn't seem to make anything happen. Her entire life was paused, and she was coming to realise that there was nothing she could do about that. The windows rattled violently as a chaotic rush of air like a bomb-blast shook the garden. At first Roxy assumed it was an earthquake, but there was no accompanying rumble or devastation. She sprang to her feet and wrenched open the door to see Calliope's naked form lying on the grass.  
  
Roxy gathered Calliope up and pulled her inside. Calliope barely seemed to weigh anything, she was painfully emaciated and her skin was weirdly pale and mottled. Roxy felt, though the thick material of her robe, that Calliope was unnaturally cold- it was not just a simple lack of body heat, she was actually steaming in the air and ice-crystals crusted her closed eyelids and lips. Roxy laid her on the couch and cried out sharply as she stood up- where her hand had been touching Calliope it felt like a layer of skin had frozen off as she pulled her hands away.  
“Callie? Callie can you hear me?”  
Roxy rushed off to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and when she came back Calliope's eyes were cracked open and regarding her with infinite weariness. Calliope opened her mouth but she could only hiss hoarsely. Roxy held the water up for her, but when it touched her lips the surface instantly began to ice over and Calliope had to work her jaws to break the ice-water before she could drink it.  
“Callie, what the hell happened to you?”  
“Promised,” Calliope whispered.  
“Oh my God, don't try to talk, don't listen to me yammering on, you just rest, okay? I'm going to take care of anything you need, I'll take care of you honey.”  
Calliope just nodded slowly and laid her head back.  
  
Roxy didn't trust the idea of laying a blanket on her, she was so cold that she'd only free the material and Roxy fancied that the slightest moisture in the fabric would turn to ice, not much use. She went out to their little shed in the garden and returned lugging the old space heater that they kept for the winter. She set it down a few feet away from Calliope and plugged it in. The elements heated up sluggishly and illuminated the wounded cherub in a bright red glow of warmth. That made an immediate difference and Calliope shifted slightly, sighing. She seemed to drink in the heat in some way, and Roxy watched her nervously for a moment, before electing to run to the kitchen and start preparing some food for when she was ready to eat.  
  
The shock of seeing Calliope again had overridden other concerns, and it wasn't in the nature of their relationship for Roxy to make a big deal out of her nudity, but once Calliope was at least a little settled, Roxy couldn't help but to glance her over. Whatever had happened, Calliope was once again looking mostly like herself in that she was the same size and shape she had been before she left, albeit emaciated and pale. The strange mottled pattern of her skin was gradually starting to fade, and now Roxy could clearly see the cuts and slashes. The wounds were not bleeding, and the crust of ice that had formed where she had bled had served to disguise just how hurt she was. Roxy kept walking back and forth, busying herself between preparing food, supplies and things she thought Calliope might need and returning periodically to touch her forehead and check on her temperature.  
  
Buy the time the sun went down Calliope was merely chilled, and could be touched without discomfort. The cold itself didn't seem to be bothering her, but it was clear that her core temperature was deeply below anything that a human could survive. Roxy sat herself down on the couch next to Calliope and gently lifted Calliope's legs into her lap so that she could remain reclining comfortably. Roxy mutely began to stroke her legs, and sighed softly. Despite the chill from Calliope the space heater was warming her up in the robe she still wore and she found herself lulled by the heat. Shortly, and inevitably, Roxy drifted off to sleep.  
  
Roxy woke from a start from a dream about death in smothering blackness, a cry held back in her throat. She looked around wildly for a moment as she regained her bearings and realised that Calliope was watching her, and smiling softly.  
“Callie? Oh I'm so sorry, I fell asleep,”  
“I know, it's okay.”  
“It's not okay hon, I said I'd take care of you and I will.”  
“Thank you.”  
“Can I get you anything? I got some soup going before, I know it's not exactly that weird-ass stardust crap you like, but we humans find it fixes everything.”  
Calliope blinked slowly, deliberately closing her eyes for a moment and opening them again. Her voice was weak and distant, but she seemed to be fully conscious now.  
“Maybe later. This is nice.”  
“What is?”  
Calliope slowly wiggled her toes and tilted her head on one side. Roxy grinned and resumed stroking her legs. She could feel the flaws and ridges on Calliope's skin where she had been cut and lashed.  
“Does it hurt?”  
“Yeah,” Calliope sighed, “everything hurts right now.”  
“I didn't think anything could, like, harm you,”  
“Some things.”  
Calliope shrugged weakly and Roxy resumed rubbing. Her skin felt warmer now at least, by far.  
“So... do you want to talk about it?”  
“Mmm?”  
“Well if you're here then you won, right?”  
“Oh,”  
“Callie?”  
“I don't, um,” Callie stopped and took a deep breath, “I don't know if you want to hear about all this,” she folded her arms defensively over her chest.  
“Callie. What happened out there?”  
  
Calliope told her, or at least told her as much as she was able to describe in terms that made sense in human speech. The concepts she had gleaned, the feelings she had been exposed to, were raw, atavistic and primal. There was no word in English for the sudden realisation of a pressing biological imperative so detailed and precisely calibrated that it demanded an immediate response without argument. Roxy listened patiently and in mounting shock as Calliope shyly, but candidly described the mating war of the cherubs to her. After it was over with they both sat in silence together. Without speaking, Roxy leaned over and pulled Calliope into her arms, cuddling her up tightly. Calliope did not resist, and just snuggled against Roxy's chest with a chill shiver.  
“I'm so sorry, honey,” Roxy whispered.  
“Don't be, don't be. It's different for us, this is the destiny of a cherub. It's funny, but I feel that part of the urge I felt is accepting it... afterwards.” She sighed and snuggled against the crook of Roxy's neck, demanding of heat, “that sounds stupid even to me.”  
“Don't say that, honey. I don't, like, get it? But I get it. I mean, humans have things they just gotta do, too. If that's how things are then it's how they are, all I know is I have you back and nothing else matters to me, okay?”  
“Roxy?”  
“Yeah, hon?”  
“Can we stay here, just like this, for a while?”  
Roxy stroked her back and kissed the top of her head, “as long as you want, Callie.”  
  
They woke up together in the morning, rising naturally from sleep. The space heater had been on all night and by now the whole room was a sweltering, steaming mess. Calliope was looking a healthier shade of green, although now Roxy was flushed and pink with sweat and felt horribly sticky. She yawned and grunted and made to get up, and felt a little green fist grab at her robe. Calliope shook her head.  
“Don't go,”  
“Aw Callie, I have to at least clean up a little, I'm a wreck right now.”  
“Don't care,” Calliope smiled.  
“Easy for you to say, you don't sweat.”  
“I think I could, if I concentrated.”  
“Urgh, no, forget that. I need a bath.”  
“Oh,”  
Roxy grinned and patted her cheek, “which means you're having one with me.”  
Calliope smiled and nodded happily.  
  
Roxy shed her robe easily, there was no shame in letting Calliope see her and they had long ago exhausted their curiosity about each other's anatomy anyway. Calliope sat patiently on the edge of the bath while Roxy ran the water.  
“Callie, are you all right there?”  
“Hmm?”  
“You keep hugging your tummy, are you okay?”  
“Um,”  
“Callie?”  
“Roxy, there's something else,”  
“What is it?”  
“I have an egg coming.”  
“A whatnow? Like, an egg egg? An actual egg?”  
“Sure. It's growing, I can feel it. It's a little uncomfortable, but I'm able to hold it's development.”  
“You're stopping it growing more?”  
Calliope nodded.  
“So are you going to, uh,” Roxy thought for a moment, “lay it?”  
“You mean like an Earth chicken?”  
Roxy giggled and shrugged.  
“Well, something like that, I guess. But I still haven't decided.”  
“What do you mean? Decided on what?”  
“Well,” Calliope rubbed her stomach absently, “if I wanted to, I could collapse the egg structure now, destroy it.”  
Roxy shut off the water and turned slowly to stare at her. Calliope was just watching her calmly.  
“You're serious?”  
“Well, I haven't decided yet.”  
“But I mean... it seems like that's a pretty big fuckin' thing to be thinking about, isn't it?”  
“Not really,” Calliope was watching her curiously, trying to understand, “if I let the egg grow, then it would just mean another cherub around, that would be very dangerous.”  
“But, it's your kid, right?”  
Calliope shrugged again, “I guess so. Cherubs don't really think about it that way, we don't have a relationship with our progeny. As soon as it is capable, it would just wander off to stake a claim on territory of its own.”  
“I see.”  
  
Roxy started the water again, and ran the bath in silence. Calliope watched her carefully. She had obviously trespassed on some area that was of great importance to humans. She knew that they had a very different relationship with their spawn, who they allowed to remain with them for an inordinate amount of time, but Calliope had always put the idea down to yet another odd yet adorable human quirk. She certainly felt no sense of kinship with the egg developing in her body, any more then she would do any other cherub.  
  
The both slipped into the bath, sitting opposite each other with their knees intertwined. Roxy sighed happily at the chance to clean herself off, and Calliope just smiled wanly and watched her.  
“Roxy?”  
“Yeah, hon?”  
“What was it like having human antecedents?”  
“You mean parents?”  
“Mm.”  
“Well, I guess it would be no easier to explain what it's like then it is for you telling me what sex with a gigantic star-snake is like.”  
“Ah, yes I suppose.”  
  
They sat in silence, and Calliope turned around so that Roxy could wash her back.  
“I never really got on with my mom,” said Roxy out of nowhere.”  
“So it's not that different then.”  
“Yeah but, I wish I had, you know? It's the most important relationship a human can have,” Roxy nodded.  
“I don't think I would make a very good biological antecedent. I don't have the instincts for it, Roxy.”  
“Well you know, uhm, you're not alone.”  
“Um,”  
“I mean, I'm here? I'd help you.”  
“You have to understand how dangerous a young cherub is, Roxy. It's no joke,”  
Roxy leaned forward to wrap her arms loosely around Calliope's middle and rested her cheek between Calliope's shoulder blades.  
“I know. But cherubs have a tough life. Maybe if they actually had someone there looking out for them, it wouldn't be so bad for them.”  
Calliope stared ahead, idly running her fingertips over Roxy's arms.  
“The child will have a lot of problems. It takes a long time for cherubs to establish the dominance of their good or evil natures,” she shivered and gave a start, “oh Roxy, what if it turned out to be evil-aligned?”  
“Well, you didn't.”  
“I had you.”  
“So your kid will have you.”  
“Both of us,” Calliope cupped a little water in her hands and tipped it over her head thoughtfully.  
  
  
  
  
  
Outside a neat little house with a wide, green garden a woman was calling to a child playing in the grass. She was tall and slender. Her hair, always lightly blonde, had lightened almost to ash. She didn't like thinking about it, and Callie politely pretended not to notice.  
“Hey! I know you can hear me.”  
“Five more minutes!”  
“Now, kid!”  
“Mo-o-o-om!”  
“Do I have to come out there?”  
“No-o-o-o!”  
  
The young cherub picked himself up- he was taking his turn with the body today- and raced back toward the house. At the glass door leading to the lounge Roxy grabbed the collar of his jumper and yanked him back.  
“Hey! What do we do before going back inside?”  
“Mo-o-o-o-om!”  
“Don't you mom me young man. Shoes!”  
The child grumbled and snapped his jaws menacingly, but he acquiesced and kicked off his shoes obediently. Roxy patted the top of his skull fondly.  
“All right, scoot.”  
“Bah!”  
  
They gathered together around the dining room table. Roxy had a salad, Callie had a bowl of stardust with a smaller bowl for their child.  
“Well, someone's in a hurry,” Calliope smiled. Roxy winked at her.  
“Kid's all wore out from conquering worlds and smashing civilizations down the end of the garden, isn't that right?”  
She patted his cheek and he bristled, blushing.  
“No.”  
“Oh so I didn't catch you telling an ant hill that you were going to rain fiery death upon their antly works?”  
The blush deepened.  
“Mo-o-o-om!”  
“Oh let him be,” Calliope smiled, “I was the same at that age.”  
  
Roxy smiled and remembered something. She went to the pile of post that they kept on the kitchen counter and retrieved a crudely hand-written letter that had been left on top in a pink envelope, with no address on the front.  
“That reminds me, your sister wrote you a letter.”  
“So?”  
“So you can take a few minutes to read it and think about what you want to write back.”  
“Don't want to.”  
“Oh, you'd rather let her just go ahead and have her turn right now instead? Cah-”  
“MOM!”  
Roxy grinned and handed over the letter. The threat of saying the name of the other sibling and prematurely ending the current ones turn in the body was the ultimate sanction, and they both knew she wasn't afraid to use it.  
  
Calliope ate her meal quietly, watching her son read the letter. They encouraged the twins to write to each other every day, and they had promised both the twins and each other that they wouldn't read the letters and pry. Nonetheless, she still got a little nervous at these times. He was muttering under his breath as he read slowly, his finger tracing over the lines of text written in red marker pen on pink paper.  
“What does she say,” Calliope asked quietly.  
“Just stuff, you know. Ask her.”  
“I'm asking you.”  
He shrugged, “she says she wishes I'd write her more.”  
“Do you want to?”  
Another shrug.  
“I had a brother too, you know. I used to wish that we could write to each other nicely, like you do.”  
“Huh.”  
  
Behind him, Roxy had quietly brought over his favourite acid-green paper, and his favourite fat black marker pen. He frowned thoughtfully for a moment, then started to write. Roxy wandered over to Calliope and wrapped an arm round her casually. Calliope stroked her hand, and smiled up at her. Roxy caught the look and grinned.  
“What?”  
“Nothing,”  
“No nothing, what is it?”  
“I'll tell you later, when you know who is in bed.”  
From the other end of the table, “I can totally hear you, moms!”  
“Hush you, get writing.”  
  
Roxy chuckled and shook her head, before kissing the top of Calliope's head.  
“All right later, I'll come and see you then.”  
  



End file.
